**Upgrading to the M4 Max: A Closer Look**

The recent upgrade to the M4 Max chip has been met with excitement among professionals who rely on powerful machines for their work. I decided to put this new power to the test, comparing it to my previous machine equipped with an M3 Max chip. The results were impressive, and I'm eager to share them with you.

**Benchmarking Scores**

The first step in evaluating the performance of the M4 Max was to run some benchmarking tests. I started by looking at the GPU power, which seemed substantial compared to the M3 Max. The single-core score increased slightly, while the multi-core score showed a minor improvement. However, it's the GPU scores that truly set the M4 Max apart. In the Blackmagic Raw test, I achieved 90 frames per second, while on the AK CPU Benchmark, I reached an impressive 377 frames in 8K metal mode.

In contrast, my previous machine equipped with an M3 Max struggled to keep up, scoring 80 frames per second in the 8K CPU Benchmark and 297 frames in 8K metal mode. This indicates that the M4 Max has a significant advantage when it comes to handling demanding video processing tasks.

**Real-World Testing**

To get a better understanding of how the M4 Max performs in real-world scenarios, I put it through its paces with some practical tests. One task involved running a 24-frame-per-second clip through Topaz Labs' AI video app, which generated frames using AI to create slow-motion effects without actually slowing down the original footage. This is a testament to the power of the M4 Max's chip and the software that takes advantage of it.

In this test, the M4 Max finished in an impressive 4 minutes and 48 seconds, while my previous machine took a more leisurely 6 minutes and 15 seconds. This highlights the significant performance gains achieved with the new chip. If you're someone who regularly uses AI video tools for work or personal projects, the time saved here is substantial.

**Fan Noise**

One notable difference between the two machines was the fan noise level during these tests. While I rarely notice fans kicking in when editing, they became a significant issue during the benchmarking process. On both machines, the fans roared to life as soon as the test began, producing a noticeable hum that could be heard for several minutes.

This is an important consideration for anyone who plans to use their machine for extended periods or at high intensity. While it's not a deal-breaker for most users, it's essential to weigh this against the performance gains offered by the M4 Max.

**Workflow and Performance**

In my day-to-day workflow, I work with 4K timelines that include effects plugins, custom LUTs, and motion VFX like Roto AI masks. This can be a challenging task, especially when working with demanding software. In these tests, the M3 Max still managed to keep up, finishing in a minute and 17 seconds for this specific workload.

However, the M4 Max showed a more significant performance advantage, completing the same tasks in just 1 minute and 7 seconds. While this is not drastically impressive, it's still a notable improvement that can make a difference in real-world scenarios.

**Conclusion**

For professionals who already own an M3 Max machine or are considering upgrading from a previous generation of Apple silicon chips, the M4 Max offers a compelling upgrade path. While I wouldn't recommend going out and purchasing the M4 Max unless you're currently using a chip like the M1 Pro or Max that's significantly less powerful.

However, for those who have an M2 Pro or M1 Pro machine and are looking to take advantage of the latest technology, the M4 Max is well worth considering. The performance gains achieved in benchmarking tests translate into significant time savings in real-world scenarios, making it a worthwhile investment for professionals who rely on powerful machines for their work.

**Call to Action**

I'd love to hear from you in the comments below! Have you recently upgraded to an M4 Max or are you considering doing so? What's your workflow like, and how do you find the performance of these machines? Share your experiences and insights with me, and let's continue the conversation.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe M4 Max MacBook Pro came out last Friday alongside a new Mac Mini and a new M4 iMac and I've spent the last few days working on this new machine so I wanted to briefly share with you my opinions on the new Macbook as well as run a few stress tests to see how things have improved from last year if they've improved at all so what's new on this year's MacBook Pro well um not a whole lot on the outside everything kind of comes from within uh and the M4 lineup of chips so my machine's configuration goes a little something like this we have the M4 Max chip with a 16 core CPU and a 40 core GPU there's 48 gigs of RAM and 1 tbte of SSD storage so there's technically one cosmetic difference this year and that's if you get the nanot taxture display option and uh I immediately regret my decision of not getting that one I'm not entirely sure why I didn't go with it I do like it on the iPad Pro especially when traveling and this is kind of my main machine for traveling uh but then I often find myself kind of flip-flopping that because I go to the M4 iPad Pro without it and I'm like wow this looks a lot sharper and brighter and so I wanted that sharpness on my Mac at all times over the anti-reflective coating but then I saw it in an Apple store and I thought this looks really good and there wasn't a lot of Reflections and that's a pretty reflective environment and so I don't know I'm having second thoughts oh well I guess uh it's just an option if you want it and I may made the incorrect Choice obviously you can get the machine in a 14 or 16in size this year just like last year and you can get it in silver and space black so this year I went from a 16-in space black down to a 14in in silver I mostly wanted to switch things up but also I really missed the 14inch size for me making this my main travel machine is by far the best uh form factor for traveling the 16-in was just way too big for me especially on those tiny tray tables now the display is a little bit better in terms of brightness we go up from 600 on the M3 model for SDR content up to 1,000 and you're still at 1,600 for HDR content so when I crank the brightness up on both machines the M4 and the M3 Max I can tell on the M4 that it is a bit brighter but I'm not sure it's going to reflect on video now all of the connectivity in IO is the same this year you still have mag saave three USBC ports um 3.5mm headphone jack SD card slot and HDMI but the three Thunderbolt ports this year are Thunderbolt 5 as opposed to last year and the year before I think was Thunderbolt 4 uh you really can't tell the difference obviously by looking at them but you can now connect three external 6K monitors if you want uh if you have a thunderbolt 5 drive you get about 120 gbits per second in transfer speeds uh I unfortunately don't have three 6K displays or Thunderbolt 5 anything and so whenever I do get those accessories whether it be a dock or a drive or whatever the case may be I'll be sure to test it but yeah uh there's an improvement there with the Thunderbolt ports now the M3 Max machine that I had last year here is almost spec for speec in terms of the configuration so no major differences at all with the CPU GPU cores and RAM I did run standard benchmarks as well as a few real world stress tests for things that are in my day-to-day workflow so let's start with the arbitrary numbers we have geekbench scores you probably already seen this so you can skip it if you want to but we got about 3,000 for single and almost 21,000 for multicore on the M3 Max 3600 for single and 25,000 for multi on the M4 Max for open CL and metal we have 98,000 and 163,000 for the M3 and 119,000 and nearly 192,000 for the M4 Max now these numbers are approximate didn't want to give you the full uh exact number but you can read them on screen here this is exactly what the scores were so pause it and read it if you need to but obviously the M4 Max has a small increase in single core and a minor increase in multicore but the GPU power here seems to be quite substantial from these scores when it goes from the M3 up to the M4 so I decided to put that to the test here we did a couple of re roll tests and I also did one more Benchmark I've actually never used this Benchmark before but I wanted to give it a shot I always use the Blackmagic disc speed for the SSD but there was also the Blackmagic raw test where it basically Bally stress test AK 12:1 compression Blackmagic raw video and so I got it 90 frames per second for the AK CPU Benchmark and 377 frames in 8k metal on the M4 Max now on the M3 Max we had an 80 frames per second score on the 8K CPU and 297 uh 8K metal uh so again some improvement here for the M4 Max I don't really know what that all means in terms of real world so let's go right to the real world test here now when it comes to video I tried out something different and I've actually been using this recently been demoing it uh I took an 8-second clip in topaz Labs AI video app where I ran the 4X slow motion preset on a clip that was not in slow motion at all it was a regular 24 frames per second clip and it just generates frames using AI that aren't there and it's pretty wild and I highly recommend giving it a shot it's like $300 for the entire software but you can try it for free if you want to and so the M4 Max finished in 4 minutes and 48 seconds and the M3 Max finished in 6 minutes and 15 seconds so the old adage here that time is money is really on display here if you're somebody who uses these AI video tools quite a bit and this is just from one year ago to now in terms of the chip Improvement when it comes from the M3 Max to the M4 Max which is crazy you're almost saving 2 minutes here I also wanted to stress that this was the only test that kicked on the fans and immediately on both machines and they were on and going and pretty loud here uh the fans don't come on often for me when I'm you know obviously editing and doing other things but for this it almost is a guarantee that you're going to hear those fans now as for my normal day-to-day workflow of a Final Cut Pro timeline export this is a relatively you know moderate video I had a 6 minute and 30 second timeline uh in 4k with tons of effects plugins custom Luts I even used motion VFX like Roto AI masks to get some things out of there mask them up uh and that can get pretty intense and the M3 Max finished in a minute and 17 seconds while the M4 Max finished in a minute and 7 seconds so it's still an improvement but definitely not anything crazy drastic 10 seconds is still impressive and it does all add up but I'm not sure that's a reason to go out and upgrade your machine in fact this video is not meant for those who have an M3 Max to go out and upgrade to an M4 Max it was just the machine that I had with very similar specs and it's been a year and I wanted to see what that Improvement was you're definitely fine to keep going on an M3 for another 3 years or so before you even start thinking of upgrading but for those who have a pro chip looking to get up to a Max maybe an M2 Pro or an M1 Pro or even an M1 Max for those people out there I remember looking back at an old video where I was doing the same types of exports on an M1 Max and it was nearly four times longer than the M4 Max you're looking at nearly four to five minutes where I just said that the other one finished in about a minute and 7 seconds and so that's a pretty pretty big jump from 2020 to 2024 now and if you're somebody out there who has that machine and you have one of the first Apple silicon Pro or Max machines and you're thinking about upgrading I think you're going to be really happy with the M4 Max or even the M4 Pro lineup of chips but of course I would love to hear from you in the comments down below what do you think uh did you pick up a new machine or are you thinking about it what do you do for work or what are you using the machines for would love to hear that in the comments down below this is now with Mac Rumors thanks so much for watch watching and I look forward to seeing you around in the next videothe M4 Max MacBook Pro came out last Friday alongside a new Mac Mini and a new M4 iMac and I've spent the last few days working on this new machine so I wanted to briefly share with you my opinions on the new Macbook as well as run a few stress tests to see how things have improved from last year if they've improved at all so what's new on this year's MacBook Pro well um not a whole lot on the outside everything kind of comes from within uh and the M4 lineup of chips so my machine's configuration goes a little something like this we have the M4 Max chip with a 16 core CPU and a 40 core GPU there's 48 gigs of RAM and 1 tbte of SSD storage so there's technically one cosmetic difference this year and that's if you get the nanot taxture display option and uh I immediately regret my decision of not getting that one I'm not entirely sure why I didn't go with it I do like it on the iPad Pro especially when traveling and this is kind of my main machine for traveling uh but then I often find myself kind of flip-flopping that because I go to the M4 iPad Pro without it and I'm like wow this looks a lot sharper and brighter and so I wanted that sharpness on my Mac at all times over the anti-reflective coating but then I saw it in an Apple store and I thought this looks really good and there wasn't a lot of Reflections and that's a pretty reflective environment and so I don't know I'm having second thoughts oh well I guess uh it's just an option if you want it and I may made the incorrect Choice obviously you can get the machine in a 14 or 16in size this year just like last year and you can get it in silver and space black so this year I went from a 16-in space black down to a 14in in silver I mostly wanted to switch things up but also I really missed the 14inch size for me making this my main travel machine is by far the best uh form factor for traveling the 16-in was just way too big for me especially on those tiny tray tables now the display is a little bit better in terms of brightness we go up from 600 on the M3 model for SDR content up to 1,000 and you're still at 1,600 for HDR content so when I crank the brightness up on both machines the M4 and the M3 Max I can tell on the M4 that it is a bit brighter but I'm not sure it's going to reflect on video now all of the connectivity in IO is the same this year you still have mag saave three USBC ports um 3.5mm headphone jack SD card slot and HDMI but the three Thunderbolt ports this year are Thunderbolt 5 as opposed to last year and the year before I think was Thunderbolt 4 uh you really can't tell the difference obviously by looking at them but you can now connect three external 6K monitors if you want uh if you have a thunderbolt 5 drive you get about 120 gbits per second in transfer speeds uh I unfortunately don't have three 6K displays or Thunderbolt 5 anything and so whenever I do get those accessories whether it be a dock or a drive or whatever the case may be I'll be sure to test it but yeah uh there's an improvement there with the Thunderbolt ports now the M3 Max machine that I had last year here is almost spec for speec in terms of the configuration so no major differences at all with the CPU GPU cores and RAM I did run standard benchmarks as well as a few real world stress tests for things that are in my day-to-day workflow so let's start with the arbitrary numbers we have geekbench scores you probably already seen this so you can skip it if you want to but we got about 3,000 for single and almost 21,000 for multicore on the M3 Max 3600 for single and 25,000 for multi on the M4 Max for open CL and metal we have 98,000 and 163,000 for the M3 and 119,000 and nearly 192,000 for the M4 Max now these numbers are approximate didn't want to give you the full uh exact number but you can read them on screen here this is exactly what the scores were so pause it and read it if you need to but obviously the M4 Max has a small increase in single core and a minor increase in multicore but the GPU power here seems to be quite substantial from these scores when it goes from the M3 up to the M4 so I decided to put that to the test here we did a couple of re roll tests and I also did one more Benchmark I've actually never used this Benchmark before but I wanted to give it a shot I always use the Blackmagic disc speed for the SSD but there was also the Blackmagic raw test where it basically Bally stress test AK 12:1 compression Blackmagic raw video and so I got it 90 frames per second for the AK CPU Benchmark and 377 frames in 8k metal on the M4 Max now on the M3 Max we had an 80 frames per second score on the 8K CPU and 297 uh 8K metal uh so again some improvement here for the M4 Max I don't really know what that all means in terms of real world so let's go right to the real world test here now when it comes to video I tried out something different and I've actually been using this recently been demoing it uh I took an 8-second clip in topaz Labs AI video app where I ran the 4X slow motion preset on a clip that was not in slow motion at all it was a regular 24 frames per second clip and it just generates frames using AI that aren't there and it's pretty wild and I highly recommend giving it a shot it's like $300 for the entire software but you can try it for free if you want to and so the M4 Max finished in 4 minutes and 48 seconds and the M3 Max finished in 6 minutes and 15 seconds so the old adage here that time is money is really on display here if you're somebody who uses these AI video tools quite a bit and this is just from one year ago to now in terms of the chip Improvement when it comes from the M3 Max to the M4 Max which is crazy you're almost saving 2 minutes here I also wanted to stress that this was the only test that kicked on the fans and immediately on both machines and they were on and going and pretty loud here uh the fans don't come on often for me when I'm you know obviously editing and doing other things but for this it almost is a guarantee that you're going to hear those fans now as for my normal day-to-day workflow of a Final Cut Pro timeline export this is a relatively you know moderate video I had a 6 minute and 30 second timeline uh in 4k with tons of effects plugins custom Luts I even used motion VFX like Roto AI masks to get some things out of there mask them up uh and that can get pretty intense and the M3 Max finished in a minute and 17 seconds while the M4 Max finished in a minute and 7 seconds so it's still an improvement but definitely not anything crazy drastic 10 seconds is still impressive and it does all add up but I'm not sure that's a reason to go out and upgrade your machine in fact this video is not meant for those who have an M3 Max to go out and upgrade to an M4 Max it was just the machine that I had with very similar specs and it's been a year and I wanted to see what that Improvement was you're definitely fine to keep going on an M3 for another 3 years or so before you even start thinking of upgrading but for those who have a pro chip looking to get up to a Max maybe an M2 Pro or an M1 Pro or even an M1 Max for those people out there I remember looking back at an old video where I was doing the same types of exports on an M1 Max and it was nearly four times longer than the M4 Max you're looking at nearly four to five minutes where I just said that the other one finished in about a minute and 7 seconds and so that's a pretty pretty big jump from 2020 to 2024 now and if you're somebody out there who has that machine and you have one of the first Apple silicon Pro or Max machines and you're thinking about upgrading I think you're going to be really happy with the M4 Max or even the M4 Pro lineup of chips but of course I would love to hear from you in the comments down below what do you think uh did you pick up a new machine or are you thinking about it what do you do for work or what are you using the machines for would love to hear that in the comments down below this is now with Mac Rumors thanks so much for watch watching and I look forward to seeing you around in the next video\n"